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What are readers saying about Cities of the Red Night?
| Reviews of Cities of the Red Night - Page 1 of 2 |
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-11-30 09:35:03.
(Language: English)
 
I avoided this tome for far too long...after reading it i was mentally fragged, i mean its hardcore homosexuality and drug abuse ran me ragged but christ what a tour de force. the man's a genius! It was recommended by my Ex (female, a hard assed Patti Smith type) so i stole it and devoured it whole! highly recommended but NOT for the easily shocked, the literary beginner or the Harry Potter fanatic!!
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-05-23 12:32:00.
(Language: English)
very graphically homosexual
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-04-13 02:26:42.
(Language: English)
Kirja kuin trippi, aivan totaalisen seko. Välillä kyllä aika vaikealukuistakin. Ei homofoobikoille, tästä kyllä selviää viimeistään Burroughsin omat mieltymykset.......
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-02-04 10:43:59.
(Language: English)
Naked Lunch changed my view on life and literature. This one has warped it.
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-09-25 07:09:28.
(Language: English)
One of the best surreal and futuristic pirate "what if" novels of WSB. The first and most powerful collage-like novel in a trilogy of later books that dissolves into bland and dull prose. Perhaps the finest work in the "wild boys" style by this experimental poet/writer.
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-01-25 01:26:40.
(Language: English)
Interesting, Lots of gay sex. Not my fav.
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-10-01 01:20:12.
(Language: English)
Fascinating absurdist novel
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-07-21 04:42:35.
(Language: English)
at points this book was ridiculously good. however, there is just way too much of everything. you can really tell he was an opium addict and a homosexual. not that either are bad, biut this book pretty much is just about guys going around shooting up and fucking each other. the plot is too incoherent.
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-03-02 01:16:28.
(Language: English)
is an odd one, it allmost induces insanity, and bends the mind and reality and perspective as only burroughs can.
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-09-14 08:34:49.
(Language: English)
Burroughs has always been one of my favorite writers.
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-09-26 04:57:33.
(Language: English)
If “Naked Lunch†was a rough draft, “Cities of the Red Night†is the final print of William S. Burroughs’s madness – blending addiction and homosexuality together with history and philosophy in the way only the man 'Rolling Stone' called “anarchy’s double agent†could. Burroughs weaves countless threads of narration together, overlapping and diverting through space and time. Clem Snide, the private asshole, investigates the decapitation of a young man; five youths sign onto 'The Great White' pirate ship and its mission of personal freedom; a mysterious virus called B-23 spreads through the world and demands drug treatment. All of this is tied to the mythical Cities of the Red Night, six locations of unknown time where “nothing is true, everything is permitted.†Like all of Burroughs' writing (with the exception of the marvelous "Junky") "Red Night" will be hard to access for anyone not accustomed to his unique style. Many of the book’s elements are typical of his writing: young nubile Mediterranean boys, blue flashes of drug hallucinations, sadistic junkie doctors, the mysterious world of Interzone and conspiracies full of frequent sex. The book also ends in a convoluted mix, all boiled together into a miasma of flesh and lights and ellipses. But “Red Night†is more narratively cohesive than his previous “cut-up†works, and in many ways reads like an actual novel. The narratives of Snide and the ship share similarities that make you go back and look for overlap, and Burroughs excellently implies that there is always more going on than we can actually perceive. We are seeing his version of events around the world, and it's a vision that is so original you can't help but look along. “Cities of the Red Night†will not win any new fans to the Burroughs camp, but beat fans frustrated by “Naked Lunch†should definitely check this one out. For those that appreciate his writing, it’s quite the mind-fuck.
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A Reader posted a review at 2009-12-22 07:07:24.
(Language: English)
Absolutely amazing. One of my favorites.
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-09-11 03:44:55.
(Language: English)
Someone else has written that 'the plot is too incoherent.' Oh dear. Travels through a hallucinatory, but strangely coherent set of parallel narratives at different times and places. Motifs from others pop up in each, giving you that feeling of being inside a set of nested dreams following on from one another. Burroughs seems to be getting at an idea that human consciousness is itself a kind of sexually transmitted virus. Images and experiences from his travels - Morocco, South America - recur, and give you the impression that you're reading what Burroughs himself witnessed. It's a great book - convincingly rendering a parallel universe - part real, part Burroughs.
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A Reader posted a review at 2009-01-07 07:27:10.
(Language: English)
Burroughs's second best book. Transcends all the classic senses of contemporary literature.
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-01-08 07:49:52.
(Language: English)
The only book I have ever read where I felt like I could smell and taste the events Buroughs' described. A total mesmerizing and skin crawling tavel log.
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-07-30 03:16:14.
(Language: English)
Absolutely full of rapidfire sodomy but if that doesn't put you off, this is an early examplar of chaos magick philosophy and you can see the influence it's had on a lot of later ideas. And as cut-up it's a lot easier to read than Kathy Acker.
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Mikko posted a review at 2010-02-04 02:04:07.
(Language: English)
Good concept but becomes rather tiresome and repetitive.
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-08-10 08:04:34.
(Language: English)
Maybe Bill's best. The characters are indelible; they stay with you.
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-12-18 02:48:42.
(Language: English)
Grotesque and amazing.
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-09-10 03:20:32.
(Language: English)
Probably the best way to start an investigation of the work of William Burroughs, this novel is relatively linear, has plot, and develops some startlingly interesting characters.
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-01-25 04:14:06.
(Language: English)
Once I suspended my disbelief and didn´t pretend to try and understand this, I enjoyed the ride - some ¨interesting¨ imagery
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-03-18 07:40:22.
(Language: English)
The first part of Burroughs final trilogy, when all teh mechanical manipulations had become part of his magical psyche and the random juxtapositions had actual subconscious depth.It almost makes sense.
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-05-15 10:45:33.
(Language: English)
makes me want to pop my red top
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A Reader posted a review at 2009-02-20 06:50:07.
(Language: English)
Nothing is true, everything is permitted.
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Randy posted a review at 2011-03-02 04:00:41.
(Language: English)
interesting, very difficult to describe. it is certainly a blistering indictment or societal condemnation set within a kind of alternative history of the world - using a time-travel narrative device which collapses past/present/future around a single set of characters that function almost like arch-types or theatrical props. For a long time I deluded myself into thinking it was somehow possible to follow a coherent storyline, but there is ultimate only a thematic, psychedelic swirl. Recognizable bits of ideas and metaphors periodically manage to rise up, gasping, amid a torrential stream of consciousness. There is an 18th century pirate sub-plot centered on the defeat of the Spanish along the coastlines of the americas. There is a film-noir detective story that provides the longest sustained linear narrative in the book (while also doing double-duty as kind of meta-tool for the reader's attempt to navigate the basic structure of the book). There are heavy doses of far-distant futuristic decadence and anarchy, space travel and alien biology, global viral scourges, demonic ritual and occult practices (ala Kenneth Anger films), a major obsession with erotic asphyxiation and snuff-culture, constant graphic homosexual fantasy and porn-cliche, and all-consuming drug addictions of every conceivable variety. Beastial, viscous, scatological, depraved and unrelenting. Burroughs is absolutely a fascinating force of nature, and I completely enjoyed the unavoidable sound and cadence of his speaking voice which just infects every sentence. His descriptive skills, in a purely conventional sense, are remarkable, maybe genius, and the textures and tones of the book are hypnotic (or narcotic). But for all the color and surface activity, there is a void of absolute blackness at its core. It is a beautiful, electric bricolage; but ultimately indulgent, indecipherable and probably meaningless.
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| Reviews of Cities of the Red Night - Page 1 of 2 |
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